WHY ISN'T DAVID HEARN THE MAIN CHARACTER IN THE REFLECTING POOL STORY?

At some point in our post-Columbine era of mass shootings, advocates began accusing the news media of paying too much attention to perpetrators and not enough to victims. Some argued that the press shouldn't name the perpetrators of mass shootings at all. The press hasn't gone that far, but most well-meaning news outlets try to report on the victims and the lives they've lost.

No one was shot in the Trump administration's war on imaginary Reflecting Pool vandalism, but I'd like to see a little more attention paid to David Hearn, whose life was upended because he put his hand in the pool's water.

This is the story:

donald trump can just sit in mar-a-lago and make up a lie on someone and then have the entire weight of the federal government come down on that person.

That should scare you.

— Covie (@covie_93) August 1, 2026

But this is how the story is being presented:

This is a story about the President and several of his hand-picked appointees all committing crimes and blatantly lying to the public while stealing public funds and abusing the criminal justice system, but the NYTimes describes the situation like they're recapping a soap opera.

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— Max Kennerly (@maxkennerly.bsky.social) August 2, 2026 at 8:24 AM

The story cited here, by Glenn Thrush of the Times, isn't just about Trump's feelings -- it's about the feelings of the three people Thrush regards as the main characters. The innocent man who was indicted isn't one of them.

Jeanine Pirro faced the cameras on July 2 with characteristic self-assurance to announce the indictment of the 67-year-old ex-Olympian David Hearn for trashing “sacred” government property, President Trump’s highly prized but shoddily renovated Reflecting Pool.

There's something off about the final clause in that sentence. I understand what Thrush is trying to say -- that Trump seems to prize the Reflecting Pool but did a shoddy job of renovating it -- but the pool isn't "President Trump’s highly prized ... Reflecting Pool." It isn't Trump's pool at all. It's our pool.

“This is not only a priority for the president, but for myself,” said Ms. Pirro, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, disclosing felony vandalism charges against Mr. Hearn for touching the lining of the pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial.

But Hearn wasn't charged with a felony "for touching the lining of the pool" -- the U.S. attorney's office said at the time of his indictment that on June 19 "Hearn allegedly ripped a piece of the recently installed blue pool sealant on the bottom of the reflecting pool at the Lincoln Memorial."

Every reasonable person knew at the time that this was a lie, and Pirro is admitting that now. But Hearn was repeatedly slandered by the president and other Republicans.

We could've made this montage of liars an hour long but you get the point

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— MeidasTouch (@meidastouch.com) July 31, 2026 at 7:02 PM

Fox News told us:

Records show former Olympic canoeist David Hearn, who was charged in the weekend vandalism of the Reflecting Pool, has ties to a major left-wing fundraising network as protesters descended on the National Mall and racked up multiple criminal charges.

Hearn, 67, donated to Democratic fundraising apparatus ActBlue 10 times while also contributing to Barack Obama’s presidential campaigns five times, an administration official told Fox News Digital.

Fox also tried to portray Hearn as a repeat offender because in 1996, when the Potomac River flooded, the former Olympic canoeist was arrested for venturing into the floodwaters in his whitewater canoe. (The charges were dismissed.)

But Hearn is all but invisible after the first couple of paragraphs of the Times story, which is all about Trump, Pirro, and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum:

Ms. Pirro’s office dramatically reversed course on Friday, not only withdrawing the charge against Mr. Hearn but blasting the Interior Department for the rushed and “botched” renovation....

Ms. Pirro’s 20-page filing did not refer to, much less rebuke, Mr. Trump for claiming the damage was caused by left-wing vandals rather than his administration’s missteps. But it raised innate doubts about his assertion that criminals had slashed the pool’s lining with a “knife or blade.”

That Ms. Pirro ... was aiming much of her criticism not at Mr. Trump, but his interior secretary, Doug Burgum, who oversaw the issuance of a no-bid contract to renovate the pool, did not appear to matter much.

On Saturday morning, Mr. Trump dashed off a post on Truth Social that made clear he was unhappy with Ms. Pirro, a friend and ally since the 1980s....

“I don’t know what she was thinking? To me, it was a pure case of VANDALISM,” he wrote, adding, “There may have been some contractor difficulty, but the major damage was caused by VANDALS!”

In the second Trump term, the media has been able to focus on some ordinary citizens brutalized by ICE, but only in a sustained way when the victims, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, were murdered and were white. Earlier, Senator Chris Van Hollen forced the media to pay attention to Kilmar Abrego Garcia when he was sent to rot in a Salvadoran torture prison.

But it's hard to get the media to care when there a story doesn't include Beltway boldface names. The press is paying very little attention to Texas defendants who were sentenced to decades in prison in connection with a shooting that wounded a cop at an anti-ICE demonstration in Texas. Not only was the shooter sentenced to 100 years in prison, but others who attended the demonstration yet had no connection to the shooting received sentences of 50 years, and one defendant who wasn't even present for the shooting was sentenced to 30 years. The East Coast press doesn't care.

Even if these aren't the most sympathetic defendants, the extreme sentences are appalling. But no top official is holding news conferences about this case in D.C., and Trump hasn't made the story a Truth Social fixation. So the defendants aren't of interest to the national media. They should be, just as every victim of Trumpian authoritarianism should be.